Am I doing this repeat loop wrong?

Question

I'm writing an AppleScript to transfer layers from OmniGraffle 5 to Adobe Illustrator. It copies the first OmniGraffle canvas perfectly, but when it gets to the second canvas, it copies the last layer of the previous canvas instead. This might be an issue with how I'm changing the layers' "visible" setting at different times. But if is, I don't understand why this would work for the first canvas but not the second when they use the same code.
Any suggestions on how to fix this loop would be greatly appreciated.
set myDocument to "[file path]"
tell application "OmniGraffle 5"
set oDoc to open myDocument
repeat with theLayer in every layer in every canvas in oDoc
set visible of theLayer to false
end repeat
repeat with currentCanvas in every canvas in oDoc
set canvasName to name of currentCanvas
repeat with currentLayer in every layer in currentCanvas
set visible of currentLayer to true
set layerName to name of currentLayer
(* this allows the second layer to be copied *)
tell application "OmniGraffle 5"
activate
end tell
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "a" using {command down}
keystroke "c" using {command down}
end tell
tell application "Adobe Illustrator"
set AIDoc to (make new document)
save AIDoc in canvasName & "-" & layerName & ".ai"
activate
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "v" using {command down}
end tell
end tell
set visible of currentLayer to false
end repeat
end repeat
repeat with theLayer in every layer in every canvas of oDoc
set visible of theLayer to true
end repeat
end tell

Answer 1

well I don't use OmniGraffle, and I don't have Illustrator installed, but the problem is almost certainly with the way you're using GUI scripting (which is unnecessary in this case). try either of the following approaches. you'll have to play with them because (as I said), I don't have the software to test it on. note, for instance, that I'm just guessing that "contents of AIDoc" is a valid reference - I know that Illustrator has some means of addressing the contents of a document, but 'contents' may be the wrong keyword.
<pre class="jive-pre">
set myDocument to "[file path]"
tell application "OmniGraffle 5"
set oDoc to open myDocument
repeat with currentCanvas in every canvas in oDoc
set canvasName to name of currentCanvas
repeat with currentLayer in every layer in currentCanvas
set layerName to name of currentLayer
set the clipboard to currentLayer
tell application "Adobe Illustrator"
set AIDoc to (make new document)
save AIDoc in canvasName & "-" & layerName & ".ai"
set contents of AIDoc to the clipboard
end tell
end repeat
end repeat
end tell</pre>
or if you want to avoid calling the clipboard at all, try setting the layer directly into Illustrator.
<pre class="jive-pre">
set myDocument to "[file path]"
tell application "OmniGraffle 5"
set oDoc to open myDocument
repeat with currentCanvas in every canvas in oDoc
set canvasName to name of currentCanvas
repeat with currentLayer in every layer in currentCanvas
set layerName to name of currentLayer
tell application "Adobe Illustrator"
set AIDoc to (make new document)
save AIDoc in canvasName & "-" & layerName & ".ai"
set contents of AIDoc to currentLayer
end tell
end repeat
end repeat
end tell</pre>
also, it's bad practice to call one app from within another app like this - it creates confusion, and sometimes even generates keyword conflicts. if would be a lot better to move the whole 'tell application "Adobe Illustrator"' block into a subroutine (call it writetoIllustrator(...)), and then call the subroutine with 'my writetoIllustrator(...)' to break it out of the OmniGraffle tell block.